Recently, a technique has been developed to use a vehicle such as electric vehicle, hybrid vehicle, or the like as an electric power source and feed electric power from the vehicle to an electrical apparatus external to the vehicle or to a household. In the following, electric power feeding from a vehicle to a receiver external to the vehicle is also referred to simply as “external discharging.”
Japanese Patent Laying-Open No. 2007-236023 (PTD 1) discloses a hybrid vehicle configured to be capable of external discharging. This hybrid vehicle performs external discharging in the following way. Namely, when the state of charge of a battery is higher than a predetermined state of charge, the hybrid vehicle feeds electric power stored in the battery to an external receiver and, when the state of charge of the battery is lower than the predetermined state of charge, the hybrid vehicle uses engine's motive power to generate electric power therefrom and feed the generated electric power to an external receiver.